Dragonfly's founding partners are also paying attention—what is the concept of "chain abstraction"?
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Dragonfly's founding partners are also paying attention—what is the concept of "chain abstraction"?
The core goal of chain abstraction is to integrate the increasingly fragmented modular landscape of Web3.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Illia Polosukhin
Translation: Luccy, BlockBeats
Editor's Note:
In the current trend of Web3 development, chain abstraction has gradually become a topic of growing interest. Since its founding in 2018, the NEAR ecosystem has been steadily advancing toward the vision of chain abstraction.
In this article, NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin explores the concept of chain abstraction and provides a detailed overview of NEAR’s technology stack, emphasizing the importance of chain abstraction for improving Web3 usability, discoverability, and security. Illia Polosukhin points out that NEAR’s tech stack has expanded to support comprehensive chain abstraction across cross-chain operations and diverse applications. BlockBeats presents the full translation below:
Most dapps today are not truly decentralized applications. If users need to leave the app before using it, then it’s essentially just a frontend—not a real application. If users must manually join exchanges, manage multiple accounts, handle multiple gas fees, and use bridges, can we really say an application has been built? I don’t think so—and this may explain why only millions of people worldwide are actively using dapps.
Because we believe in a more open, decentralized internet that supports individual sovereignty and benefits the world as a whole, if we want to see broader adoption of Web3, we must take action.
The prevailing idea in today’s Web3 landscape is modularity—the separation of different blockchain functional layers such as settlement, data availability, and execution—to improve scalability. Layer 2s, optimistic rollups, ZK rollups, data availability layers, sidechains, and state channels are all examples of modular solutions.
The proliferation of blockchains and rollups has led to a decline in user and developer experience. Modularity and the existence of numerous chains have fragmented liquidity, applications, and users, creating significant complexity that average users struggle to navigate. The same applies to developers, who often feel forced to commit to specific tech stacks, thereby limiting their app’s potential audience. Today, when you build a dapp and choose a single chain, you’re effectively locking yourself into a niche market.
I propose a better vision for the entire Ethereum ecosystem and Web3: let us work together to drive mainstream adoption through chain abstraction. The idea is to abstract blockchains away from users so they no longer act as barriers to entry or participation. NEAR has focused on this vision since 2018 and has now become the most widely used network in Web3, with 12.4 million monthly active users and 34 million total users.
Here’s how we can unify Web3 and attract billions of users through dapps.
What Does This Look Like for Users?
Let’s imagine what using a dapp should be like: seamlessly conducting transactions across networks, easily navigating between experiences—all within a single interface. Take Alice, for example. She picks up her phone and opens KAIKAI from her lock screen. She orders a smoothie at a local store, discovers a discount at her favorite clothing shop Maison inside the app, and purchases a pair of spring shoes. Alice realizes she’s earned enough KAICHING rewards to unlock a badge at Maison—an NFT on Polygon—without even knowing it—and redeems it directly in her account.
Later that day, while browsing Maison in the KAIKAI app, she notices her new badge unlocks a ticket discount for an exclusive event at the store featuring her favorite DJ. She purchases two tickets using KAICHING, still unaware they’re NFTs on Arbitrum. With an extra ticket, Alice invites her friend Bob and asks for his address.
Bob sends his NEAR address to Alice and opens his app to view the ticket. He sends Alice some ETH in gratitude and checks the various cryptocurrencies in his wallet. With some time on the subway, he decides to buy BTC and borrow USDC to mint a Fighting Dragon NFT on Magic Eden. His friend Charles had texted earlier wanting one too, so they can battle each other’s dragons in the new NEAR-based game “Year of the Dragon,” where their dragons fight for coins.
All these interactions and transactions happen within a single, fully private interface. No wallets to manage, no network switching, no transaction fees to handle—these are embedded directly into exchanges or purchases and processed on behalf of the user. Alice doesn’t need to know which network the tickets are on; Bob can send payment in any cryptocurrency he chooses and instantly buy others the next second. All of this happens within one app. This is the level of seamlessness our ecosystem should strive for.
How Do We Achieve Chain Abstraction?
Every developer building in Web3 would benefit from accessing the vast potential user base illustrated in this example—anyone who simply uses the app. Today, developers choose a network based on access to liquidity or specific rollup/chain users. But in a chain-abstracted future, they can simply build using the best available technology. Users will grow through superior experiences.
Imagine if Gmail users couldn’t send messages to Outlook addresses—it wouldn’t make sense. The same applies to Web3 addresses. The core assumption behind chain abstraction is: end users don’t care about the underlying blockchain. They just want apps to work. In reality, blockchains are merely infrastructure for extracting value from Web3: asset security against seizure, economic opportunities, removal of intermediaries in transactions, global permissionless identity, provenance of data, entertainment experiences, and more.
The central goal of chain abstraction is to unify the increasingly fragmented modular landscape of Web3. While this will be most evident at the user experience level, the consolidation of liquidity and accounts relies on innovations at the security layer.
Zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs introduce a fundamentally new approach to ledger security. Previously, trust was required in a decentralized set of validators; now, even a single computer can prove that rules have been followed via a simple cryptographic proof. This means developers no longer need to either build on shared chains or spend massive resources launching new ones—they can simply launch one on their own server.
This new paradigm enables cross-settlement: as more chains become fully provable (ZK-provable), actions on one chain cannot be reversed unless certain proofs are published on another, without needing to re-execute the entire chain. Through ZK proofs, transactions from one chain can be settled across multiple others. This creates mesh security, as all proofs are continuously aggregated, enabling secure movement of assets across chains.
To achieve unified security, two things are needed at the bottom of the stack: data availability, which ensures everyone can sync even if operators go offline, and a decentralized sequencing mechanism for applications that doesn’t rely on centralized operators.
The next layer is identity with unified security. Users can have one address across all possible chains and freely move assets between them. From the user’s perspective, this should appear as a single account through which they interact with apps across chains, with assets automatically bridged or swapped.
I call this “account aggregation.” NEAR will launch the next version of FastAuth in March 2024, featuring the ability to map NEAR addresses to EVM, Bitcoin, and other addresses. NEAR accounts can request signatures for transactions on other chains, enabling multi-chain dapps to be built directly as smart contracts on NEAR.
The final layer is the unified experience—or application layer (e.g., DapDap)—which allows interaction with apps across various chains without requiring users to switch or exit a single interface. Decentralized frontends can offer easy-to-build components in a chain-abstracted way. NEAR achieves this through NearJS, combining data indexing and decentralized frontends—V2 also launching in March 2024.
How does NEAR achieve chain abstraction?
Since its inception in 2018, the NEAR ecosystem has advanced toward the vision of chain abstraction by focusing on usability, flexible account models, and a highly scalable blockchain capable of supporting mainstream applications serving billions of users. Today, the tech stack has expanded to deliver full chain abstraction across cross-chain operations and diverse applications.
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A scalable, integrated blockchain capable of supporting over one billion daily active accounts.
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A secure aggregation tech stack including NEAR DA, zkWASM (in collaboration with Polygon Labs), and fast finality powered by EigenLayer.
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Account aggregation on top, enabling transactions across all chains using a single account.
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A data layer supporting queries from monolithic, integrated, modular, private, and permissioned chains to predictable protocols.
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Intent relayers that leverage this infrastructure to execute complex intents across chains.
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Decentralized frontends offering multi-chain discovery and composability, creating a unified experience.
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Super (application) wallets—user-friendly interfaces that enable seamless navigation across all of Web3 without switching networks or managing gas tokens and bridges.
Critically, all these layers support builders across the entire Web3 spectrum—including Ethereum, rollups, L2s, and beyond—as more chains evolve toward a chain-abstracted future.
Conclusion
2024 is the year to hide the complexity of multi-chain infrastructure and deliver true Web3 experiences. Improving usability and discoverability while addressing liquidity fragmentation and security trade-offs should be the top priority for all Web3 builders.
Let’s turn chain abstraction into a movement. The NEAR ecosystem invites builders from across Web3 to leverage our solutions and collaborate with us to build even more chain-abstracted tools.
Special thanks to Zaki Manian for discussions and feedback that helped shape this article.
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